Water

Know Your Water Use

Use water like it’s a precious commodity, because it is!

Every drop counts! Whether you’re on “city” water or have your own well, the benefits of conserving water add up:

If you’re on a municipal water meter, your water bill will go down.

If you’re on a well, you’ll have water for drier times of year like late summer/early fall.

Regardless of the source, you’ll save money on the electricity it takes to pump and heat water. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heating water can account for 12% of a home’s annual energy use, or about $264 for an average home.

See the tips in the Resources section for easy ways to cut your water use.

Water is a limited and precious commodity, and much of the world doesn’t even have access to clean water. The less you use, the more there will be for everyone, and you’ll save money on water and energy bills.

What activities in my household use the most water?

Most water is used in the bathroom —showering, running water at the sink and using the toilet account for over 50% of household water use. Washing clothes uses the next highest amount of water, 27%. Changing your water use in the bathroom and making sure you are doing full loads of laundry is a good place to start saving water.

Will my dishes really get clean if I just scrape them instead of rinsing them?

Using a spatula to get most food off the dishes is often just as good as pre-rinsing them. But if you don’t run the dishwasher soon after it is loaded, tough foods like melted cheese may be a problem. Try the spatula first. Also, if your dishwasher is less than 10 years old, it probably has a soil sensor, which automatically adjusts the wash cycle based on the soil load. If the dishwasher senses a relatively clean load, it can adjust the cycle to use less energy and/or water.

I love my showers! Is there way to cut water use but still take a long shower?

(3) Comments

A larger impact on water use and on the functioning of our urban streams can be accomplished by reusing shower and washing machine water for landscape watering. The County should be taking the lead on the means to do this. This could have large favorable impact on the costs to users who want thriving landscapes, to urban streams for which the base flows could be increased significantly, and to the cost of water treatment due to lowering of volume of flows to be processed. References to this can be found under “gray water systems”. The benefits to urban streams would be sufficient to justify this practice even if the water is not explicitly used for landscape watering but is just infiltrated into the ground water system throughout the region.

Consider the benefits of a Rain Barrel in your yard, the county supports rain barrels, with incentives!
•It is one of the easiest and most cost effective methods of helping our planet.
•Free refills! Save money on municipal water bills and qualify for rebates.
•It conserves fresh water and reduces demand on the public water supply.
•It reduces erosion and flooding caused by turbulent storm water runoff.
•Make your plants happy! Plants prefer non-chlorinated water.
•Using collected rain water to slowly irrigate your lawn allows the water to be absorbed back into the groundwater rather than run into the street and on into the streams.
•Reducing runoff reduces water pollution.
•It allows for watering even during a drought.

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My Green Montgomery is a project of the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection. It is a service to help Montgomery County residents think and live in a way that safeguards and sustains the health of our people, our county, and the planet.